Breaking Up with Twitter: A Celebrity Guide to Qwittering

After yesterday's curse-strewn rant against the music industry, Chris Brown said "GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!!!!" to Twitter. But will it stick? A guide to the art of the celebrity qwitter.

(Yes, I intend to use the words qwitterer, qwittering, and qweet throughout this post. Deal with it, and maybe brainstorm an alternate sexual definition for that last one?)

DO say good-bye to your followers. Particularly if you have a lot of followers, an unexplained exit will be met only with chaos, confusion, and impersonators rising up in your wake. Chris Brown would've gotten an A in this section, but his teenage fascination with the caps lock and exclamation point keys bring it down to a low B:

I WANNA THANK MY FANS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT. I LOVE YALL. GOODBYE!!!!!!!!!!!!

DON'T be too transparent about why you're qwittering. While most qwitterers claim they are doing it because they are simply too zen to be bothered, they all secretly had triggers: the hotheaded tweet they regretted, that one hateful retweet that really stung. The inherently petty nature of Twitter will make your reason seem even pettier; if you let people know what it is, you will only emphasize the ludicrous and/or self-important drama that preceded your qwitter.

Chris fails this criterion, since his qwitter came after a curse-strewn rant against the music industry and stores that won't stock his CD and Walmart publicly chastising of him.

DO wait a few days for the micro-drama to blow over, instead. Twitter has to be the easiest of platforms in which to keep up appearances. Announce your breakfast choice, retweet a couple LOLcats, and then, at a moment of relative calm, bow out gracefully.

DON'T make empty threats. The only thing more cringe-worthy than an epic, melodramatic qwitter episode is one that is followed by un-qwittering. In the wake of Meghan McCain's Cleavage Tweet of DDDoom, McCainBlogette flew into panic of re- and deletweets, actively engaging her haters until she landed at the precipice of qwittering:

But then she un-qwitters by apologizing to those "offended" by her boobs, thanking "my family and friends for their support," suggesting a charity for concerned readers to donate to, and explaining that her brush with qwittering was hardest test the good lord has ever given her.

DO have a sense of humor and keep your tongue in your cheek as you qwitter. Let us now make a case study of Miley Cyrus' music video qweet:

It's cute, fun, and elaborately nerdy in a way that is appropriate to (a.) teen girlfriends making up dance routines on the weekend, and (b.) the very medium of Twitter, which is but an elaborate series of namedrops, call-outs, and self-obsession, anyway.

Summation: Miley Cyrus wins the day, Chris Brown squeaks past graduation (at qwittering; at life he's still pretty low on the list), Meghan McCain is held back and must repeat the Qweeth Grade.